Press Freedom
Posted: 22nd September 2025
This is Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief at The Intercept. I don’t usually send readers emails, but I wanted to reach out to you today because it’s been a terrible week for press freedom. I think it’s important to share how The Intercept is approaching this extremely volatile moment for our country and also ask for your help.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, the attacks on press freedom are at a fever pitch, led by the most powerful people in our government.
It’s been a whirlwind, so let’s briefly recount:
- JD Vance and Stephen Miller announced a new phase in the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent, saying they would use “every resource” the government has to “destroy” organizations on the left and specifically called out The Nation, the 160-year-old progressive magazine.
- Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its journalists for their coverage of his 2024 campaign, accusing the paper of being “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” A federal judge dismissed the case on Friday but gave Trump 28 days to refile it.
- The chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened Disney’s license, causing Disney/ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air “indefinitely” for mocking Trump’s response to Kirk’s murder.
- The Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah and MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for evoking Kirk’s own words in coverage of his murder.
As the Trump administration further escalates its crackdown on press freedom — something straight from the authoritarian playbook — I expect that a culture of fear will increasingly grip corporate media outlets and their journalists. It will only become harder to get accurate information about our government and its abuses.
That means there’s an even more urgent need for The Intercept’s fearless independent journalism, and that’s what you can expect from us, no matter how hard the Trump administration comes down on the press — or after us specifically.
The reason I can make these assurances to you is because The Intercept is reader-funded. We answer only to you, our readers.
But we need your help to keep paying our hard-working reporters, while also taking prudent steps to prepare for the Trump administration’s increasing crackdown on the press, including increasing our liability insurance coverage, beefing up our legal defense team, and strengthening our internal security procedures.